The 10 Most Underrated Towns in America

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2. West Palm Beach, Florida
Once the plain sister to ritzy Palm Beach, now a textbook example of how to revitalize a ho-hum town into a bustling urban center for a mostly suburbanized region • The downtown, moribund just a few years ago, now teems with restaurants and street life • Clematis Street hops every evening • A Saturday market and a thriving new arts district pull in folks from all over • A superb urban master plan drawn up by town planners Duany/Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) helped to jump-start much of the excitement • CityPlace, a massive new retail/residential main street, followed on the heels of the DPZ plan. (Although CityPlace is a strong vote of confidence in the newly revitalized downtown, some fear that its glitz and gloss could overwhelm the fragile renaissance taking place just a short distance away.) • Close-in residential areas are a showcase of classic Florida architecture from the early decades of the 20th century • A big parks push has been proposed, featuring improvements to the waterfront connected to the "Turquoise Necklace"—a network of green space, bike trails, and waterways that will surround the city • Former mayor Nancy Graham and her successor, Joel Daves, have assembled one of the most visionary planning departments in America • Narrowed streets, pedestrian arcades, and traffic-calming measures have been incorporated along with state-of-the-art "typological" planning codes • The same kind of urban resurgence is under way in nearby Lake Worth, Boca Raton, and Del Ray Beach.

3. Louisville, Kentucky
A truly comfortable town where you can enjoy big-city advantages on a modest budget • It could become the next destination for those looking to cash out of expensive houses and harried careers in pricier coastal cities • An amazing calendar of arts attractions and events • The most beautiful square in America, St. James Court, will make you swear you’re in Europe • Park DuValle, once a mean-streets public housing project, has been transformed into a thriving mixed-income neighborhood without booting the original residents • A recently designated state park and interpretive center across the Ohio River from downtown draws attention to the most prolific fossil bed on the continent • The Louisville Slugger factory and museum on Main Street is adjacent to an impressive stand of 19th-century cast-iron storefronts (the grouping is the country’s second largest, just after New York’s Soho district) • The waterfront is enjoying new life, and there’s even talk of tearing down an ugly freeway there • The E-Main neighborhood is rebounding as a work/live/play center for young technology workers • Old Louisville is one of America’s most intact historic districts • The Highlands, Crescent Hill, Beechmont, and other great neighborhoods from the streetcar era are linked by Frederick Law Olmsted–designed parkways • City and county governments recently voted to merge, hoping to bring greater efficiency and more streamlined planning to the greater Louisville area.

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